“Undesirable…”
The Obama Administration has blamed sequestration for everything from the ceasing of self-guided White House tours to cutbacks in medical care for our Wounded Warriors at the all-services Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The latest victims of the proposed cut to future budget increases are the government lawyers with the Federal Defender program, as reported by the The Weekly Standard on Aug. 19, 2013.
Citing an “emergency move” to keep the lawyers assigned to the federal government’s legal defense section of the Judicial Branch on the job, the United States Courts website announced that the Esquire-suffixed will have to endure life with a $15 per hour pay cut.
Yet for those concerned that accused mass murderers and bilkers of little old ladies won’t receive the best legal defense tax dollars could afford, the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States assures the American people that the cuts, although deemed “undesirable,” will only be temporary with four weeks being the maximum allowable time.
Currently, the maximum hourly rate in non-capital [death penalty] cases is $125 (a 12 percent decrease), with the maximum rate in capital cases set at $178 an hour an 8.4 percent cut). The $15 an hour cut reduces the maximum back to 2010 levels.
